OCEAN CITY, Md. -- The operator of an Ocean City hotel has settled a suit filed after the carbon monoxide deaths of a Lebanon County man and his daughter in 2006.

U.S. District Court Judge William Nickerson signed an order last week dismissing the case filed by the family of Patrick Boughter, 40, and Kelly Boughter, 10, of South Lebanon Township, against the Ocean City Days Inn.

The settlement order does not describe the conditions of the agreement.

The suit filed by Boughter's wife, Yvonne, also named the installer and manufacturer of the water heater that leaked the gas, poisoning the family in their room. Yvonne Boughter and another daughter, 7-year-old Morgan, survived.

The defendants have filed multiple counterclaims against each other, but it is not clear whether the settlement resolves all of them.

Investigators determined the gas entered the room from a disconnected pipe from a water heater. The suit alleges the heater was defective and was not properly installed or maintained.

The lawsuit says a guest at the hotel was sickened by a carbon monoxide leak from a water heater in 2005 and that the hotel was closed temporarily.

Carbon monoxide detectors were not required at the time. However, because of the Boughters' incident, Ocean City passed a law requiring them in hotels, condominiums and new homes.

They are not required in Pennsylvania.

Ocean City emergency officials said the response to Yvonne Boughter 's first 911 call on June 27, 2006, was delayed because it was confused with an earlier call by another family sickened at the hotel.

Yvonne Boughter called 911 a second time, four hours later. But when emergency responders arrived, her husband and one daughter were dead.

The city's investigation found no wrongdoing by responders, said emergency services director Joe Theobald. A policy was changed so that emergency units must twice acknowledge the specific location from which a call originates.

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